Some of my latest thinking on the nature of love.

Dearest X,

My apologies for the slight delay in response. Life intervened, and I'm sure you know how (unpleasant) that can be at times.

Are you yourself Christian? I am, and it is quite fascinating how, in a religion based on love and salvation, hate and exclusion have come to define many churches. Not only that but churches also tend to be segregated by race and class, also flying the face of the universalistic message of the Gospel. It is quite difficult to be a faithful and devoted believer, and at the same time participate fully in a Christian fellowship. Many of those who profess to try believer hate the "sinner", and many who love the sinner seem incapable of believing in any sin (at all).

And you are correct: everyone does seem to be searching for their soulmate. This search is, of course, largely conditioned by the media images of what "happy" looks like both physically--you yourself pointed out some of the racist dimensions of that belief--and emotionally. What I have discovered, however, is that different people connect with people in different ways, and can be typed into four general categories. (These categories overlap somewhat, and most people are strong in two and weak in two.) The first set--thoughts and emotions--revolve around how communication occurs--whereas the second set--activity and certainty--turn on how the two lives unfold together.

Some people connected via their emotions and want a partner who is emotionally stimulating and pleasing. The ability empathize, be sad, get excited, and feel emotions in great depth and scope demarcate this group of people. (This is what most people mean when they say the word 'soulmate.') Not everyone falls into this category as there are some people who do not trust their emotions and therefore do not share as much with anyone, and there are people who emotionally stunted or immature (for any number of reasons).

Other people connect via their intellects. The ideal partners for these types are people to whom they can talk to about anything, who feel that their partner understands how they reason and perceive the world. Shared memories and sentimental paraphernalia mark these relationships. Nevertheless, since not everyone actively reflects on their lives, or don't live primarily in their heads, "mindmates" are not for them.

A third category of people connect via their shared experiences. What they do together--instead of what they think or emotionally share together--defines the relationship. These people, and I would count myself primarily among them (with a little bit of mindmate thrown in) are searching for companionship, that is, best friends for life who do a lot together and can rely on each other in good times and bad. Not everyone is looking for people to do things with and in fact may prefer to have a set of activities their partner does not do.

The last category of people bond in times of certainty. Regular interaction, the home life, and regular patterns of behavior best typify these unions. Since you know that some people are more spontaneous than others--and will greatly suffer from too much certainty--these people aren't for everyone either.

Hey, it's been a while since I posted to this forum. Alas, my letter writing has decreased since I got to graduate school. I wanted to share with you all the beginnings of this letter. I think it succintly captures how I am being affected by comprehensive exams.

Dearest X,

I just wanted to write, after my very brief earlier email, a slightly longer email detailing that I am well, but literally going out of my mind. I'm looking forward to March after my exam because I really need to reconnect with all those people--like you--who have provided me with sanity, solace, and more importantly, good friendship over the years during and after Dartmouth. Now I know that you mentioned, as early as Fall 2005, that it seemed that we were drifting apart. In some measure it is true that we are not as geographically close as we once were, and certainly talk less often (and thereby know less about the corresponding day to day activities of the other), but you must know, and surely still believe, that I regard you as fondly as I ever did and consider you a good friend. Some of the regular rituals of friendship demonstration have declined, but I can assure that substance and strength of my brotherly love for you has neither wavered nor exhausted itself.

In fact, once I've made it through this studying phase (and now I know how you much have felt during the crunch writing symphony phases), I clearly need a new plan to restore the balance (one might also call it gentle neglect) that characterized my earlier academic and friendship lives.

Very amusing and in the spirit of Colbert.

Neutral Tidings

Note: I sent this to a friend with whom I have briefly lived but do not know very well. I have edited spelling and for clarity, though not content. Ellipses denote omissions.

Everyone insists on sending good tidings, as if contact and good will were sufficient to produce harmony. Luckily, you and I are not that naive; we well know that contact can produce discord as well as harmony. Thus, I send you neutral tidings on the hope that they can become good tidings. However, if we are not that lucky then at least we can smile through the catastrophe, so to speak.

On our last exchange of letters, we were both caught up in the holiday moment, if not its spirit. The holidays, being perfect proof that contact is not sufficient for harmony, found you reflecting on how you had changed and on how that change was, or was not, being accommodated by your familial surroundings. Many years ago, as a Dartmouth sophomore, I realized that going home for more than 48 hours was not really an option for me. This is sad because many political theorists write about the home as the place where people can hide from public view and regenerate, only to emerge again with new stories. I've never found home to be that protective; rather, home was always like a cruel episode of Survivor written by a twisted director.

However, this email is not to dwell on the problems of home--we know that much to well--but to think about the drive that the neutral tidings of being at home produces in us as we long to get away. Indeed, we might think of home, not as a hiding place, but as a cannon into which one is stuffed until the pressure builds and ejects you out in the world of publicness. But is this world of publicity more desirable, or, at least less injurious, than the world of home? The light of the public is the sterile, hissing light of a fluorescent lamp. It is not warm, institutionally sterile, and anonymous. Indifferent in some ways, isolating in others. Dartmouth is such a public as has a very different feel from the embrace of home--even if that embrace is an unrelenting choke hold, or, the slightly more comfortable half-Nelson.

It is not clear that our coed fraternity is either a public or a home. The webs of significance are much too strong to simply be an indifferent public; but the ever-changing house, subject the pressures of the academic quarters and the positions of its members along a four-year continuum, is not stable enough to be a home per se. The actors involved change much to quickly and the intercourse involved, while deep, is far from permanent.

All of this abstract thinking sets the way for my ultimate question to you, and the purpose of this email. Having returned for your last winter in your final year, have you found warm embrace in the lives of those about whom you care, especially in the house, or, do you find yourself in an empty publicity without the complications of home, but without the warmth of others in a robust way?

Though the tone of the email might not suggest it, I am currently very happy and very content with my life with no legitimate cause to complain.

...

I hope this email finds you well.

John Stevenson

Thanksgiving Wishes

Thanksgiving has come and gone. At this writing, it is a week past, and, in the intervening time a member of my pledge class has died in his sleep due to a genetic disorder. It reminds each of us that life is short and should be cherished. Thanksgiving is one of the holidays in which we cherish what we have and celebrate life.

Each of us has his or her own reasons for welcoming the coming of the holiday. Some of us welcome the fall quarter break that occurs before exams, a calm before the story. Others of us enjoy the preparation and consumption of food and leftovers. Still others of enjoy being with friends and family that we might not see as often as we like. Whatever our reasons, Thanksgiving is an important and much loved holiday.

Thanksgiving, as a holiday, is primarily about giving thanks. What does it mean to be thankful? There are two meaning, equally important, that constitute the act of thanksgiving.

The first is being thankful for the things you have. Every one of us reached our place in life today because of the many people who were there for us when we needed it the most. They laughed with us, cried with us, got drunk with us, and most importantly, took time out of their days to spend with us, whatever the activity or cause may have been. The happiness, joy, love, and support that we have received are what we are most thankful for on Thanksgiving. Surrounding by friends and family, we remember and celebrate all those good times, momentous occasions, beautiful moments and people that form a significant portion of our lived experiences.

But you might say: my life sucks and everything is hell. Indeed that might be so. There are many experiences, both good and bad, that compose our remembered lives. Friends have been false, loved ones have flaked out, teachers and mentors have let us down. Promises have been made and just as easily broken. We all have even experienced a sense of being lost, lacking both direction and purpose. I would be less than honest if I didn't acknowledge the bad things that happen. However, we would be less than honest if our preoccupation with the worst parts of our lives overshadowed all the quiet and oftentimes anonymous good that makes our lives possible. For every teary night, broken promise, false friend, and callous remark there have been people who have been there. Some of those people became new friends and sources of strength; others of them remained anonymous but necessary avenues of encouragement for whatever we were going through at the time. Being thankful for the good doesn't mean forgetting the bad, but rather being honest about how making it through depended on those other people.

The second is not taking anything for granted. Everything good and bad in our lives could have been otherwise. To be thankful for the good times and beautiful people is to be ever ready with a word of encouragement, a helping hand, or some portion of your time for other people who may be going through a tough time. Our smile, our time, and our resources could be the difference between misery and joy for that person. However, gratitude is not just the duties that we owe to others because of our success, it is also the way we should relate to the people closest to us. Gratitude is how we move from saying that we love or care for someone to loving or caring for that person. Gratitude is not flashy and fickle; in fact, it's just being there right when someone needs you the most. Ingratitude is just another form of contempt if we say we care about someone; grateful people recognize that their loved ones could be devoting their time and energy to others, and cherish every gift of care and love that comes their way. Until next Thanksgiving, show the people you know that you care by being there, and always be ready to be that anonymous support for someone whether you know them or not.

I would like to conclude my remarks with a toast. I dedicate this toast to all of you who have been there for me. I have not forgotten your quiet, and sometimes not so quiet, labors on my behalf; your infectious smiles and wry humor; your wits and beauty; and most importantly, the fact that when it counted the most you were there. Without your love, your dedication, and your concern, I would not have the joy that I possess today. For that, I thank you. Now you might say to yourself: wait a minute, we spent so little time together. It is true that this list is a diverse set of people. Some of you are very close friends; others of you I am rediscovering; some of you I met "late" in Dartmouth career. But those things don't matter, you were there when I needed you, I have not forgotten you, and I still care. For those of you to whom I have not spoken in sometime, I look forward to getting to know you all over again.

Hope y'all had a happy Thanksgiving holiday and break. Cheers and the best,

John Stevenson

A Daunting Task

You have set a daunting task before us both. To continue a relationship through writing is no small project, and I will attempt to take you up on that challenge. You will, ultimately, be the judge of my endeavors. However, just because you aim to make the conversation meaningful, doesn't mean you should obscure tripe and gossip. To leave it merely at that level would be to doom the discourse to the excremental; however, to exclude those snippets would deny our humanity. It is human to have ideas; with those ideas comes pet peeves, petty projects, a gossiping tongue, and the occasionally prurient interest.

What is Chicago like for me?

For now, Chicago is primarily a bifurcated existence. The city is both my anonymous escape when the details of life crowd out other joys, and, the lived experience of being trained to be an academic. My social life cuts across both of those spheres--the alienating urban experience and training for a job--whereas my social life is primarily located outside the network of people with whom and from whom I take classes. This is product, mostly, of a second "freshman fall" experience. Building a viable social life fall term which transcends one's apartment building is a difficult project at best. My social life includes good, but not close friends in the city, and a range of people contactable through phone and blitz. I have even rediscovered old friends from middle and high school. My city friendships will cement with more time and familiarity.

My intellectual life has blossomed. At times, it felt as if I were atrophying at Dartmouth. Due to professors being off, or classes being offered at inconvenient times, there seemed to be a limit to what I could learn if I wanted to produce new knowledge. In the 9 weeks of classes here, I have learned much more about everything, including stuff I didn't even know existed. I've learned from political scientists, lawyers, anthropologists, and sociologists. I've dined with public policy students, social workers, musicians, poets, and philosophers. It has been amazing.

The anonymity of graduate school removed my undergraduate delightful dilemma of being known; my reputation does not proceed me here (yet) thereby giving me time to pursue the many activities which had been crowded out by my social life at Dartmouth. I can, and oftentimes do, go to the gym and run 3.1 miles per day. I have returned to blogging, a subject I will detail in a moment, and, more importantly, I have found to time to think and to read about the puzzles, questions, and ideas that motivated my coming to the University of Chicago. It has been lovely.

You'll notice, then, what has been missing from the list: a church life. I have not been able to return, completely, to the institution of the church. Why not? Because the coreligionists within the churches with whom I generally doctrinally agree have the most reactionary and conservative political beliefs.

Since I sincerely believe that Bible is, among other things, the basis for a theology and philosophy of liberation, the situation of being in a conservative community is stifling. A philosophy and theology of liberation aims to use the reality of our relationship with God through Jesus Christ to change facts on the ground and prepare souls for the afterlife. Preparation for the afterlife, however, does not suggest that we should ignore the lived experiences of the shame, suffering, and poverty of the most vulnerable and the least well off; quite the contrary, we should care for the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed. The church has seen fit to do the opposite. "When I was naked" He lamented "you did not clothe Me." Our relationships with God are garments in our hands; shall we not clothe our brethren and sistren?

The Christian mind, then, is not only called to think--"always be ready to give a defense of your faith"-- but also to act. I imagine myself as a Christian thinker because I take, as fundamental to all my social science inquiry, that "the poor you shall have with always." I gesture a bit toward a philosophy of liberation in part I. I end that piece more darkly that I would today, but it was an accurate reflection of my thinking at the time.

Christianity is beautiful because it is simple. The lived experiences of Jesus Christ, his death on a Cross, and his Resurrection, righted the relationship we didn't have with God. Now, having been restored through an act of faith, we are empowered to call others to this restoration and to right the wrongs of this world. Belief is not politics simply. Belief is a way of life, a lived experienced in which the knowledge and thoughts of one's inner soul motivate, inform, and shape the actions of the labor of one's body and the work of one's hands. The importance of Christianity to the world I begin to think about here.

But that was about my aversion to Christian communities generally. As for Chicago Christian life, I believe I might like the University Chapel congregation or the Lutheran church--if I would only let myself attend more often and learn to trust again.

You should start a blog. You needn't tell anyone about, and thus no one would read it. But you should actively write sometime every weekday. I've been doing that on the Observer since mid-October. It's been very good for my brain to think through a problem everyday. I was directly inspired to return to blogging, however, by a comment you made, half-jokingly, on the "John Stevenson Cult of Personality" message board. Though the me of today and the me of the archives might sound like different people. If I can't convince to blog--or even if I do--consider leaving comments on the existing posts at the Observer as way to begin thinking publicly. It's not hubris or confidence; it is, rather, the beginning of conversation which might inspire others.

Please, feel free to send me papers, future emails, thoughts, concerns, and feelings. I look forward to hearing from you.

John Stevenson

I shall post, from time to time, correspondences with friends here as a record. Feel free to browse.

Long Time, No See: Change of Address

This blog has become a livejournal at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/retiredhegemon/

My website for politics, culture, etc to be found at: http://dartobserver.blogspot.com/

I hope all is well. If you know me, and have not contacted me in a while, do drop me a line, I'd love to hear from you.

I've moved to Chicago to persue a PhD in Political Science.

My Favorite Friend

This I sent to my favorite friend for his birthday. He is perhaps the most beautiful person I have ever met. It has been edited slightly--things removed not added. Ellipses denote omissions.

Happy Birthday,

Summertime is in the process of ending. As with most observations, one can approach this ending either positively or negatively. On the one hand, the end of summer is the beginning of a new journey at the University of Chicago, and, in so far as the decline of one increases the other this is a good thing. On the other hand, the end of summer marks the end of what has been an enjoyable vacation. Indolently lazing about after a month of library work has increased both my joy and my mental health. Undergraduate life was, in some ways, an intensely busy schedule punctuated with moments of abandon, procrastination, and partying.

The summer, by contrast, was a time of no schedules, pure procrastination, and a casual enjoyment of the pleasures of Dartmouth after classes. I lived in Norwich, in an infamous location know as "the Experiment", renown for its excellent location as a pot house. Living there quickly provided me with the reason for why this would be the case: the house seems remote and few things could be done that would disturb the one neighbor we have. (Said neighbor is also our landlady.) The Experiment is two miles from my fraternity, and about a mile and some change from Hanover itself. Not being able to drive, I walked frequently between the two. The summer also includes my first trip to the beach (though it was in New Hampshire). Much about the world makes sense when one dwells at the meeting place of Earth and Sea.

...

I write to you on the occasion of your birthday, with the few minutes that remain. I hope that your day has been both pleasurable and rewarding. Your birth is conveniently placed such that you become older in time for each school your. And being of the firm belief that each year of life should be better than the preceding one, I offer you an observation from my experiences with might concern your next year of life.

For some reason, I am became enamored with, and now pursue, the bohemian quest of "beauty, truth, and love" as expertly summarized by the bohemians of Moulin Rouge. At first I believed that beauty was all around us and within each of us. Love was the thing that we all long for and for which we search; truth was a way of life without deception and pretense. What I have found is that beauty, truth, and love are scarce; they are gifts that certain persons bring into the world for others to share in. We move through life searching for beautiful persons, truth about our lives, and love to nurture us. You, sir, are one of those rare beautiful persons.

As a present to yourself, I want you to realize your beauty and nurture that beauty with self-love. Just to make sure that we are perfectly clear, I want to clarify what I mean when I say that you are beautiful. Beauty is a property of an individual that transforms the lives of people around them for the better. There are three common misconceptions regarding beauty which I want to distinguish from your beauty. Specifically, beauty is not located in charm, good looks, or wits. If beauty was a property of charm, then a celebration of beauty would valorize surface interactions, and the pursuit of beauty would be meaningless. Good looks are fleeting; though you are quite the smashing fellow, your good looks are not the source of your beauty. If people interact with you solely because you look good, then they are using you for their own enjoyment, taking much and offering nothing in return. Wits, necessary for preservation, do not make a person beautiful, just quick witted.

Instead, your beauty flows from your ability to put people at ease and to brighten their day. What you need, and deserve, are a group of friends and significant others who will prioritize your betterment and self-growth (we call this "love") and who will be honest with you toward the end of building you up (we call this "truth"). I pray, and hope, that the next year of your life will allow you to spread your beauty to the others that you care about. Find love, my friend, and you will an unstoppable force for the betterment of all that you meet. Remember that love is both kind and nourishing. Relationships of violence or derision are not love and should be scrapped.

I hope to hear from you soon. Enjoy your senior year and what's left of your summer.

...
John Stevenson

Right of Refusal?

I was a supporter of Sharon from the beginning, back when protests in front of Collis left associate professors of religion confessing their shame of supporting Israel next to fervent, if ill-informed, senior colleagues of mine who have since gone off to medical school. Back when it was fashionable to regurgitate the fashionably correct and ubiquitous condemnations of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's "history" as a mass murderer and a genocidal maniac in response to the equally strident and obnoxious "pro"-Israel lobby, I expressed public joy that Sharon was the sitting prime minister in Jerusalem and foretold that he would in fact have both the courage and fortitude to bully the professional political hacks of the Knesset into a peace process and into dismantling the settlements. Given Sharon's enthusiasm in supporting his buddy Menachem Begin as housing minister, making a well-timed phone call to then Prime Minister Begin at Camp David supporting an exchange of the Sinai for peace, I knew that this old warrior, whose disastrous intervention into a messy Lebanese civil war as defense minister almost chased him from public life forever, was the one who could make peace.

Mocked by Ha'aretz and detested by the European public intellectuals, this pariah politician rebuilt the Likud party that would ultimately become as much of stumbling block to him as the universal hatred of the political left. Sharon admitted recently, as reported by Ha'aretz, "I may have been mistaken in going to the [Likud party] referendum. But the question now is whether to endanger Israel with a severe political crisis with the United States that will bring about an immediate political decline...What is happening now is not an argument between me and [Netanyahu]. The issue on the table now is us versus the U.S. I want to warn those comrades who seek to exploit this hour of crisis to advance their personal political agendas. As one who established the Likud and rehabilitated it from 19 to 38 seats, there is no one in this room to whom the Likud is dearer than to me. The Likud is dear to us - but Israel is dearer."

The problems threatening to rend Israel asunder, of refuseniks, of national conscience, of the entire national project as a whole, jumped to the forefront of my consciousness, from the depths to which I had relegated them after vowing to never again address the "Israel Question" after the incivility of the entire affair from my first two years in college, after considering the two drafts of bills before the House and Senate today concerning [mandatory] national service. Many soldiers, of whom one expects adherence to the socialized and ingrained law of obedience to superior officers in most circumstances, have refused to serve in Israel's current day colonialist project (of which Sharon was a, if not the, major architect). In a nation whose founders' consciousnesses were galvanized and forged during an era of the Soviet and Nazi determination to extinguish all occurrences of religiocultural and biological Jewishness, respectively, one would expect its citizens to be extra sensitive to any politico-military apparatus, like the German SA, and, in some cases the IDF units deployed in the territories, whose existence is a daily reminder of the sub-human status of the person brutalized by such a regime. Viewed in this light, the refuseniks, by opting out of the banalizing boot of occupation, grant voice and visibility to the victims of a necessary Israeli national project. However, given this courage when the national apparatus is handling a class of person deemed alien and type-casted as hostile, what shall become of the military when Prime Minister Sharon deploys it against the profound beliefs of many of its citizens, the other great Satan in this conflict, the "settlers"?

How many speakers invited to campus to speak on the Israel question, solidly on the left as many of them happen to be, unctuously preached to the collegiate choir "Israel must dismantle the settlements"? As political, moral, and strategic necessity, this is statement is quite true; there is no reasonable person on either "side" of this question who believes in the defensibility of the settlements. What is always left unspecified by such speakers, reveling as they are in being part of the moral majority, is the actual implementation of this idea in reality and the affect it would have on the Israeli national consciousness. The precedent set by such act of political boldness-- of a government forcibly relocating its most fanatical citizens, acting against massive protests, and facing a potentially huge level of conscious objectors-- would not be neglible. Such an action raises a whole host of questions, the foremost being: when ordered to do so should a soldier act against a fellow citizen?

If we learned anything from witnessing the universally condemned horrors of the Nazi regime, or of the totalitarian terror inside the Soviet Union (with whom a number of academics sympathized at the time), it should be this: soldiers, when asked by superior officers to execute an order against a non-combatant, especially a fellow-citizen, has a moral obligation to disobey. I have seen evidence in international newspapers and on private websites that rightist opposition to Sharon has invoked this legacy of the obligation to opt-out (they are, of course, silent on the question of their complicity with the maw of the occupation) through the rhetoric familiar to us: evacuating the settlements is population transfer, a crime against humanity, an illegal military order with a black flag waving over it. Legality aside (I believe that the Israeli Supreme Court has not permitted Israeli law to have dominion over the territories), when substantial portions of the Israeli and international left have been explicitly or implicitly legitimizing political refusal to obey military orders they have used a similar method of political argument in pseudo-legal dress (i.e the international illegality of the Israeli occupation).

In the back of our minds, I think that we always knew that a day would come when an Israeli government would have to decide to evacuate and dismantle the physical manifestations of its colonialism, the settlements, against the wishes of its settler-citizens. Soldiers and policemen would have to execute this decision, many of them in contravention of their own beliefs and conscience, going against the ethical idea of non-violence against fellow-citizens that is the essence of the post-Nazi nationalist project. When the debate in Israel inexorably turns toward the question of the duty of persons in uniform to obey orders concerning the evacuation of the settlements, what will those intellectuals who glorified and praised the refuseniks of the left have to say? The simple answer that the just beliefs of leftists justify refusal and the unjust beliefs of rightists do not will not suffice. The questions of who will protect the Jewish nation from external enemies in the face of often hostile world-- the Middle East *is* a rough neighborhood--- when any objector is allowed to refuse and is praised for this refusal is a compelling problem indeed.

This debate, seemingly in the obscure province of Israel, a state that most people are content to forget is attempting to negotiate its problematic existence, will have great relevance for American students if Congress passes S89 and HR163, the Universal National Service Act of 2003, which would reinstate the military draft in the Spring of 2005 without exemptions for students or women. Maybe the debate in Israel is not so obscure after all. Given that many of us have strong objections about what the military is and isn't doing (though I have come around on the Iraq question), and about the social and moral contexts of hegemonic projection of military power in an age of unipolarity, what shall we do when are called to serve a country that we are proud to be in but often ashamed to be associated with?

Princeton, NJ 2004

New Chapter

It appears that the graduation of the 04s will continue despite my fervent hopes to contrary. Their graduation will be the first test of whether my friendships are larger than the space-time contexts in which they occur. Although I would like say that they and Dartmouth haven't changed me at all. The friends that I keep have all made their particular stamp on my personality and lifestyle choices. Without them I would not be the person that I am today. From musical tastes to opinions about the world to political and social philosophies, the dialogical and transformative nature of my relationships with my friends have substantially changed me from freshman year until now. I consider these changes to be a natural part of the self-reflexivity and imaginative capacity (these two terms I borrow from Hegel and an Arenditan reading of the Kant's Critique of Taste) of a personal maturation process. In laymen's terms, the changes which I believe that all socially aware human beings undergo is to increase the number of lifestyles and points of view that they can imagine others having and to experience a never-ending process of self-critique and self-creation.

I have not abadoned this project. When I finish writing the entries for this, I will post them. Keep checking for one day I will post here. And go see Love Actually; it's a good movie. Then see The Return of the King.

Re-lease!

That was, of course, intended to be said as if one were in an anime. While we are on the topic, I was consider re-watching the beginning of Karekanu (His and Her Circumstances) where the two emotionally reserved people fall in love. It's just so touching; I teared when I saw it the first time.

In real life love is just a four-letter word, ultimately meaning nothing and being a futile folly. Love trades the problem of loneliness for the problem of desire; but no two equals could ever love one another fully and perfectly. Because one loves a person, there are so many strings attached and so many conditions of acceptance/rejection. I'm trying to perfect a method of removing love from the brain. In its early stages, it is a consuming desire to be with the other person, to know they are doing, from what I have been told. Well, with appropiate mental control, you can turn it from consuming fire to smoldering chimney fire.

In movies and TV shows, love is so much more fun (and much less messy). Karekanu touches me deeply as I watch two very complex persons attempt to love and trust (trust is the key here) one another in their stiff ways. They are very strong individuals who are lonely, it is lonely at the top, and find their completion in each other. They demonstrate very well the almost impossibility of accurately describing deeply felt passions to the person toward whom you feel these emotions. Luckily for them, they became friends after they fell in love. I'm positive it would have been more problematic had it occurred in the reverse.

The two of them are also awkward touching each other. The problem of physical proximity... One has to become comfortable touching another person; that doesn't always happen for whatever reason. And so we watch them attempt to communicate to each other, fumble about, get embarrassed and miss the most obvious of things. We also get a look inside their heads. They have a rich and active inner life. They are as brilliant and complicated inside as they are clueless outside. Sometimes thinking too much about subjects like one's relationship toward another complicates the relationship. I can sympathize.

But I was debating on whether I ought to attempt to find a consort. It would be one of those strange no-sex consort things but it would be a fascinating experience/experiment. What I desire is intellectual and spiritual companionship but I am not really into that whole sex scene thing. However, most people who play the companionship game would not be as content with such a reticent and serene lifestyle. So I bide my time knowing that given a long enough period of time I will find people like this and befriend them. It will be fun; an orgy of the abstracted individuals living a life primarily in their heads. I can think of no better way to spend a Friday evening. Just imagine it: from work to band practice (ah, the band, that's another story) and then to a decent dinner. Over dinner the conversation starts regarding the latest theory on this or that or some bad pun or something and continues on this way for the duration of dinner. On the walk home, it would be appropiate to then hear about how our respective days are going and chit chat with the people who are hanging about in the SLR. Dance a bit during Tails and chat with people in the door. Of course, the evening must end in the wee hours of the morning after having played some kind of game, walked around outside a bit, gossiped, and the general sharing of thoughts/feelings. That would be the perfect way to spend many an evening. But alas, hoping for the ideal only begins to deal with the present... 15 minutes until I am off work.

Thud, Thud, Thud

Pardon me while I bang my head against the wall. (This is going to get real muddled soon. If you expected more...cohesion from me then we apologize for the mood.) Life is like a really bad TV show sometimes. Wouldn't you agree? I was thinking of giving up on blogging, you know to do something new, but I sort of like this post as you please business. Anyway back to topic: people can be so unreasonable. All a guy wants out of life is some decent time to reflect, consider and think. But one is mugged by ambiguity and subtlety at every turn. (Ahh, the little multicultural moments of life, no?) I think I am going to read a book and shut out the world. Reading reminds me that reality is, in fact, optional. If you don't think about, it's not a problem.

I know that I need some time to think and recharge when 1. I have the perpetual headache, 2. people keep asking me 'What are you thinking about' because I was lost in thought, 3. I know that my emotional reserves are running low and 4. I have this desire to just rip into people. I believe the entire affair with JC is ruining my day. Avoid people at all cost...

I usually don't do political polemics here but the issue of the minority left really, really irks me.

Interesting Observation

Clinton attempting the Free the Left writes: "The boys club- The sort of small time politics practiced at Dartmouth are way male, and mostly way white. If this doesn't change now, how can the dems expect to excite people unlike the ones who will be on stage?"

I always thought it was very simple. The Left, nor the Right, is really about "the other people." While pretending to be concerned, and relegating the so-called oppressed to the sidelines where mere scraps of bone would occasionally be shaken in their direction, it was always about using the right buzzwords to mobilize enough voters to grant the elites of these parties, whom we must admit will more likely be propertied, have wealth and be in the upper (middle) class, enough power to enact their political agenda. "Other people" are tangential to the formulation of the philosophies. If Clinton were truly concerned with "adding people to stage" in the future, he would immediately begin working for a few economic changes: the changing of property laws (such that it becomes easier for more people to own homes), the repeal of all agricultural subsidies (to promote trade with the third world and to lower food prices), federal and state subsidies of health services for single mothers including both adoptive, abortionist and early childhood care, crackdown on and huge penalties for criminals and illegal aliens and the disbanding of worker's unions. Combined with support for vouchers and charter schools, these measures should begin to address a good deal of the problems that restrict upward mobility. I have a distinct feeling that I won't see Clint's name of this progressive agenda. Anyone up for a protest against humanitarian intervention? (I couldn't resist throwing in the last sentence.)

Forget-me-Nots

Well, Shiva left today. He will be gone for three passings of the moon. Life around the House will be {insert adjective here} without him there to also observe and comment on it. With the recognition, in the wee hours of the morning, that the faction is dying, and with the temporary breaking of the Trio, a certain amount of apprehension has dogged my thoughts. Whether loss of social hegemony or a necessary step for the peace, one piece of the puzzle has left temporarily and I am eager to observe the aftermath of this structural change. Can the peace of the summer be maintained as winter comes upon us? Though on the bright side, after last night's brush with the Comp., I feel like an very, very unintelligent bumbling fool. And I've never felt happier. Why must I do the silliest of things and forgot about them? Of course, Aleric will never let me forget it. :)

Wasn't a month long break nice?

Some Recent Decisions and Occurrences

1. Vegetarian until further notice-- attempting to prepare a shopping list now
2. Will do at least one game in the Marching Band
3. Will buy at least one new silly hat to wear around campus
4. Will buy the first season of Xena
5. Will work full time until the end of the year

Other sad news: Many of the cool people have begun their intersession exodus. However, the UberMensch is returning this weekend and that should be fun. Also, the MOP (Man of Pictures) is playtesting a new game. The computer on which he is testing it does not do the new game justice and its still ridiculous in its graphics. *Much* better than Final Fantasy XI. The other day discovered that there are people who exist who have no conception of a private life. Very, very fascinating. And today, sickness threatens to rack my body. We look forward to the eventual return of the Mop and the Lord of Words (Low).

In the End, It Doesn't Even Matter

My blog keeps doing that annoying thing where it won't show all of the page. Just resize the window (shrink and then maximize) and all will be fine.

Tuesday was the last day of class for me. And now classes are officially over. My paper turned 21 (pages that is) and happiness spread. So I have to finish my argument about fundamentalism in America and Israel. That will occur tommorrow. I think that I will take Friday off and work Saturday instead (or write five pages on Friday and another 5 on Saturday for my govy final.) The end is near and I am not taking classes until January. That means I can read at my leisure, work on a thesis and do what I want. (Evil, Evil laughter)

My planner has come in so handy lately. Being able to actually see what one is doing, instead of being forced to remember it, is a much easier life. I went to Tea; we were entertained by tales of woe over dinner and a fashion magazine. A visiting female dignitary had shortened and curled her hair and it was very nice. After tea, a quiet dinner (alone, thank goodness) at FC with shortbread as desert was perhaps the best decision of the day. After I deposit money at the bank on Friday, a night out on the town. However, since I am trying vegetarianism (in the middle of an eight day stretch) I won't be able to have the usual bowl of chilli. *sigh*

Most of the evening, I lie in bed sleeping watching the sun set. And then I dwelt in darkness for a time, phasing in and out of the waking world.

The Laws of the Universe

Here begins a transcription of the known laws of the universe as posited by various thinkers over the recent past.

1. (affirmed by all of AO): John must lose. There is never a condition in which he can win.
a. Composer's Corrolary: One must always bring attention to this fact.

2. (postulated by the Chemist): If something can be stated simply, John will find the most techincal and cumbersome way to expres the same idea.

In Search of Fun

Friday was a most intriguing evening as they usually are. I was sitting in my room being amused those experts of all things fantastic while doing some light reading on democratic theory and religious-political mobilization when I glanced at the clock and noticed that 'Tails had started 30 minutes prior. This isn't actually a problem for me since I really haven't "Å“attended" 'tails like I used to since mid- to late spring.

(Parenthetical paragraphs, interesting not related to the point of this post) Some of my peers having jokingly told me that they think I hate tails. Of course, being in America, the joke is, perhaps, the best way to communicate a controversial opinion in a non-confrontational way. It's not so much that I hate 'tails, I really could care less, it's that there is a certain quality of interaction that I desire from my interlocutors that one cannot find among the pop music and jiggling bodies on the dance floor. The other reason is that there are people that I wish to hang out with and these persons are most often not found in the basement. As elitist as it might sound, I don't really have time to fake the pretenses of fun with people with whom I am not as close.

Now I usually do wander through the basement during our Friday night events because most people party instead of doing laundry and I seek to do laundry rather than party? I was doing so this Friday night when the Chemist, offering loudly (as he prone to do during one of his chemically-enhanced phases of boisterousness), that there has been a 'Stevenson-sighting' in the basement suggesting that I had descended to frolic among the basement-dwellers for a time. He offered it as a half-joke; I took it as such. His volume and quantity of words may vary directly with his chemical composition (he is after all the embodiment of the principle of chemistry), but the Chemist is ever the apt observing of peoples (unless of course it involves romance or flirting or something like that, but then, like most of us Rationals, we are utterly clueless to its presence). He is very good at appearing non-judgmental, but my sense is that he is a hard person to please and, like myself, a checklist exists in his mind whereby everyone is continually being rated, and their respect status, adjusted. But I must digress farther.

Before coming to back to the House, and I throw this in only to play with the space-time continuum in my retelling of the events of Friday, I had paused a moment (where a moment here means a period of time, not necessarily short) to greet Arithmetic who was working at the desk. Now Arithmetic is the embodiment of an aspect of the principle of Math; she is quick to point out when things don't add up, oftentimes speaks in her own language, and is utterly inaccessible unless she gives you tips on understanding her. We were chatting, or more correctly I was being embarrassingly loud while she was trying not to look embarrassed, when the Composer and his parents came by. Everything that is wrong with my inability to phrase things simply, an observation that was first offered by the Chemist and quickly caught on as a law of the universe* (see post entitled the laws of the universe), manifested itself in this simple conversation.

Composer: "Hey, these are my parents whom you met at the concert. I was just showing them the library." (Arithmetic and Stevenson glance at each other then at the Composer, his brother, and his mother and father.) (Some conversation occurs here, barely.)
Stevenson: "I must say that hearing the actual instrumentation is much better than the midi file. You miss things like crescendos and emphasis in the midi file."
Father of Music to Stevenson: "Are you a music major/minor?"
Stevenson: "No, I can only say that I have the pretenses of a musical education through the listening and appreciation of good music."

Who says things like that? ::slaps self in forehead:: Why couldn't I say something like "No, I am a Govy major with a focus on international relations?!" The "pretenses of a musical education" (Parenthetical paragraphs at an end)

So I went down to 'tails, found the washer going and went to read a book. Sometime later I desired to go bother Mr. Dexterity at the bar. At the bar I discovered, Dexterity with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Now this is very amusing because he has to be the most asthmatic person I know. Then I ran into Composer (again) for the third time that evening and we compared various philosophies of art and music before he ran off to play pong.

I have more to say regarding this evening but I am not quite sure how I want to phrase it. I have to do it a manner that mentions the most important details minimally while elevating the peripheral and mundane. Somehow we must communicate the tensions of a square becoming squiggly (or at least trying). When the analytic becomes expressive: the loss of the poker face... And at some point I have to tell the story of that dreadful Friday in the long, long ago...

Liberation, where art thou?

The hostage situation has improved a bit. We are up to 14 pages of 20 and the paper is due in 8 days. Plenty of time. I took most of the weekend off (only did three hours of academic work or so) and had a little trouble with the powers that be of Baker/Berry. I do hope that if I ever, for some reason, obtain a position of power, I do not turn into a cosmic asshole. (Please pardon the language, it is out of character.)

On Thursday, much gaming occurred in the basement. We were MD's world and got to the see the gods attempt to keep reality from dissolving around them. Unfortunately for them, they failed and now the world has been recreated. Hopefully all the bad parts of the original world (demons, crazed powerful wizards, an incompetent set of deities, chaos particles) are gone or at least marginalized to the point of being inconsequential. Now while there was much fun to be had in the realm of fantasy and abstraction, I did want to go to Mellows and hang out with the peoples up there. I do not, however, posses the gift of bilocation.

Since dropping that class, and my minor along with it, my Fridays now begin with going to work. On the days in which there is work or a lunch meeting but no class before it, the day begins 20 minutes before the appointment, with the express purpose of going to that appointment. Work happens at 12 noon every Friday. This Friday we ran into the boss and her puppeteers; they were determine to make me walk the bloody plank. I shan’t, I tell you. Work had conspired to ruin my mood for the day and it was succeeding.

Later that evening, after battling the oppressive humidity/heat/misery combination with a strategy I call “Four Fans and an Anime”, I went off to Rollins in search of a new piece. A world premiere, in fact. Well, I expected to see the Composer himself but did not expect to see the family of said person. The piece was absolutely wonderful. Having heard the midi many times, hearing a performance with real instruments was simply amazing. My skin even did that tingly thing it does when I enjoy a piece of music. After the piece I had to duck out, desiring food more than Britten.

I discovered recently that I was (or more accurately seemed) aloof. I was quite surprised. I hadn't noticed.

Random Musings

I've been held hostage by a paper that I am writing. If I were less of a perfectionist, I wouldn't start my paper days in advance. Unfortunately if I bring my books to dinner, it's the social equivalent of bringing a date to a get-together with friends and only paying attention to her. Isn't an important part of friendship the proximity and not so much with the conversation? I study near my friends to let them know I am there and still care. For some this is not enough. Moreover, when one is writing a paper, or otherwise distracted by academics, too much joking will convince some that you are not actually interested in spending time with them. Which is unfortunate, because I really was looking forward to some down, non-academic time last night. *sigh* C'est la vie.

As a side note, the House was a zoo, maybe even a petting exhibit for some. Though I spent my evening not as planned, my amusement level increased as the median inebriation level rose. With each passing moment, it seemed that more people teetered on the brink of insanity with a fine bit of sexual tension involved. As perhaps a bonus, we got a spectacular water fight that occurred in the portal to the Dead Zone of the House. Though I must admit, by the time I went to bed at 5, I am fairly certain that had I gone to bed earlier, it would have been a good thing for my sanity. The people whom have devoted their lives to the soul machine seem to be doing well. (As well as you could possibly be while losing your soul.) It seems to be working well for them and long as we don't give them too hard a time. Lastly, I must stop rolling well on perception and intelligence checks. It could only go poorly for me in the future if I loose the underdog advantage.